Dehydration can have serious effects, including headaches, muscle cramps, confusion, hypotension, dizziness or fainting, and can generally result in delirium, unconsciousness, swelling of the tongue and in extreme cases death, without appropriate treatment.
Dehydration can occur at any age. However, dehydration is particularly common among older people. Many senior citizens suffer from symptoms of dehydration. According to the Health Care Financing Administration, dehydration of geriatric patient is a frequent cause of hospitilization and is one of the ten most frequent admitting diagnoses for Medicare hospitilizations. Dehydration of geriatric patient is caused by many reasons. Two of the most evident reasons are the decline in the geriatric patient's ability to sense a need to imbibe fluids and the actual decline in the fluid intake. In people over age 50, the body's thirst sensation diminishes and continues diminishing with age. Moreover, dehydration is a difficult clinical diagnosis in older people because the physical sign of dehydration are often confusing. See Thomas et al., “Physician Misdiagnosis of Dehydration in Older Adult,” Journal of the American Medical Directors Association 4(5): 251-254 (2003). In fact, dehydration prevention has become one of the major clinical, quality care indicators in nursing homes.
Dehydration, despite the name, does not simply mean loss of water. Dehydration is excessive loss of body fluid: water and solutes (e.g., electrolytes) are usually lost in roughly equal quantities to how they exist in blood plasma. Treatment or prevention of dehydration usually involves the intake of necessary water and electrolytes. A number of beverages and concentrated beverage compositions are currently available (including liquid, powdered or tablet concentrates) for rehydration of fluids lost during exercise or vigorous activity. These rehydration beverages (also known as “sports drinks”), available in both ready-to-drink form as well as those prepared by the user, may be consumed before, during and after exercise. While these sports drinks rehydrate the body better than plain water, these sports beverage generally target the robust, active and healthy portion of a society.
For geriatric patients, however, the treatment or prevention of dehydration may not be easily accomplishable, due in part to the change of physiological condition of the geriatric patients. Geriatric patients are generally less motivated to eat and drink compared to a younger, healthier population, leaving to declined physiologic parameters (e.g., declined blood-electrolyte level) in the body. As these physiologic parameters decline, the lack of a desire to hydrate and feed for the geriatric patents becomes even more pronounced. These factors contribute to a negative cycle for geriatric patients for effective treatment or prevention of dehydration. Therefore, what is needed in the art is an electrolyte formulation that can be administered to geriatric patients to prevent dehydration while also reducing taste fatigue. This invention answers that need.